


Course of War

by Brightwinged



Category: Trinity Blood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6113818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightwinged/pseuds/Brightwinged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Concerning the rise and fall of the four Night Lords.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Course of War

When they were young, the Night Lord brothers were, together, leaders and renowned. Abel and Cain strode at the forefront of their armies, sweeping into the cities of the Terran in a blaze of silver and gold. A glance between them determined life, determined death. A whisper crushed thousands.

Seth kept her place behind them, so the troops could see the crisp white folds of her uniform skirt and the flicker between her shadow and her boots, but her brothers could not.

-

In happier days Abel had carved birds with his knife, sweet little creatures that nearly fluttered to life under Lilith’s brush, or perched colorless and ghostlike on Cain’s hand before he caged them gently in his fingers. Seth was too young then to wonder at her brother's skill. She simply knew that he could make beautiful things with a beautiful weapon, and kept several on a shelf, made clumsy and gaudy with her rainbow-tinged fingerprints.

They left those days behind, and professed to silently forget them, but when the Nightlords chose their weapons from the armories, Seth still picked two that her brothers did not. At first the dirks’ sheaths felt unnatural, heavy and unbalanced on her hips. With time and practice, she learned to cut men down in minutes, then seconds, then moments.

Cain, at the beginning of her efforts, taught her to shift her belt back a notch so they did not interfere with her stride, and so her blades could come more easily to hand. Later, Abel came upon her practicing and watched an entire exhausting session, before showing her brusquely how her grip and stance could be improved.

She wondered if they thought of the birds when they taught her, but never picked up the courage to ask.

When Crusnik roamed the battlefield, in any case, all weapons were left behind.

-

Seth did not enjoy the nights Abel came home bruised and bloody with no one to tend him, or the nights when high-ranked prisoners were interrogated to their last scream. Seth did not enjoy meeting with the Returners’ other leaders, who draped her in titles she’d grown without meaning to, even if they came with real respect.

No prisoner ever knew of Lilith’s whereabouts, for all that the Terran sang of their Madonna. Seth, taking a meal one night among the common soldiers, clad in uniform like theirs with her hair covered up, thought she might have an inkling as to why.

-

Lilith’s head is beauty turned grotesque in Abel’s hands, lovely features sallow, red hair matted dark. Seth leaves her brother to contemplate the loss of his everything, but keeps on moving, because their tasks remain undone. She seals the room and its floor with the stain of her mother's stale blood, then moves down the halls to find Cain’s lone vessel in the gaping hangar of the station and the ruin of Lilith’s body strapped into the copilot’s seat.

Abel is there and pushing her aside before she can touch it. Seth turns away, but she can still smell the thick, coppery, electric reek, and it's screamingly wrong. She can still hear him snarl and curse and work to piece Lilith back together. The sounds of flesh knitting are wet and sickening, and she would welcome them; the sounds of flesh dying are sticky and tearing, and they are all that they have.

Seth walks away from him at last and proceeds to program every monitor and terminal in the vicinity in preparation for dormancy, fingers automatic and flesh numb. Behind her Lilith has stained her brother’s clothes and hair and skin, white to red, to red, to red.

-

They settled in land they had already taken, for Seth had to make a choice with no more brothers to keep her in safe shadow. She had them fight viciously until the Terran understood at last—this far, and no farther will we go. Do not make us unbury our weapons, still gleaming, able to crush you even as you crush us, even should you wait a thousand years. Do not make us kill more of you, and waste this peace.

Let this war sleep, if it will not die. 

Abel never returned, so there was no one to stop them from laying the crown upon her head.

-

The priest’s robes were bulky and the heels had pushed her a little too high for it to be a perfect reflection, but Seth remembered the feel of his arms and the contours of his hug, nearly the same after nine hundred years. It didn’t matter, for a moment, that he wouldn’t move to return the embrace, or that his breath had stopped cold in his lungs at the touch of her.

-

They speak. He walks away, remote and all alone. Noontime is grey in the Empire when the foreign ships leave.

Seth looks up, frames the sun in the sky with her slender fingers and tries her best to tell herself, _no, no, I didn’t miss that at all._

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2007; heavily revised for posting on AO3.


End file.
